And if I remember the article I read recently, it said producing fuel with corn is using more energy than it saves when you consider all the costs involved to make usable fuel from something that is being yanked from the food supply chain where it should have been left.

It is certainly another feather in the Yankee's hat for the world to observe who we are and how we behave when it comes to feeding the hungry. Our cars are more important.

Below is an article about the world food crisis.

"THE GLOBAL FOOD CRISIS

By Peter Montague

Global food prices have risen 83% in the last 3 years. This spring, as prices rose steeply, food riots broke out in Haiti, Egypt, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Ethiopia, Uzbekistan, Yemen, the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia and Italy, among other places.
Because U.S. energy policy subsidizes farmers to grow corn to make ethanol (alcohol that can supplement gasoline), the U.S. is being accused of feeding its sport utility vehicles (SUVs) instead of feeding people. There is some truth to this charge, but it's more complicated than that.[1]

The global food crisis has been created by a combination of things, among them:

** Climate changes, perhaps related to global warming, such as the recent large tornado in Myanmar, the epic drought going on now in
Australia, floods last year in North Korea, and years of low rainfall in the western U.S., among other costly weather changes. Australia used to export enough rice to feed 20 million people, but six years of drought have cut their rice yield by 98%. Australia used to be the world's second-largest exporter of wheat, but the drought has changed that, too. "A big reason for higher wheat prices... is the multi-year drought in Australia, something scientists say may become persistent because of global warming," according to the Washington Post.

** U.S. farmers have been growing less wheat since the mid-1990s in favor of more-reliable soybeans and better-subsidized corn. "Wheat's
biggest problem is its susceptibility to disease, which has turned many farmers against it," explains Dan Morgan in the Washington Post.

** Rising oil prices, caused partly by rising demand for oil in China and India (and in U.S. SUVs), and partly by diminished supply caused by the Iraq war. Because of rising oil prices, the cost of transporting food has doubled in the last year alone. Furthermore, the price of fertilizer is tightly linked to the price of oil and has been rising for about five years. Use of fertilizer in the third world increased 56% between 1996 and 2008.

Increasingly it is looking as though the "peak oil" moment has arrived -- the moment when half the Earth's available oil has been extracted.
After that "peak oil" moment, oil prices are expected to zig-zag upward more or less steadily.

** The demand for meat is growing in the third world as our own meat-heavy diet is increasingly adopted world-wide. It takes about 700 calories of animal feed to produce a 100-calorie piece of red meat, so a shift to a meat-rich diet requires large increases in grains, which in turn requires greater use of expensive fertilizers, which in turn raises the demand for oil.

** As the soaring price of oil has increased the cost of tansporting food, economies as diverse as Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, India, Vietnam and the Ukraine (among others) have been feeling inflationary pressures, and have restricted food exports in an attempt to hold down domestic food prices. This has reduced food available on the
global market.

** So-called "free trade" policies have caused some previously self-sufficient nations to become food importers. This occurs in several ways. First, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund require loan recipients to make "structural adjustments" in the way they do business. For example, they must open their grain markets to competition from U.S. farmers, who are subsidized by Uncle Sam to
the tune of $300 billion per year). Competition from cheap, subsidized U.S. crops tends to drive small local farmers out of business and off their land. Second, "structural adjustment" often demands a reduction of social safety nets, so when a food crisis hits the remaining infrastructure can't manage. Third, stockpiling food is officially discouraged (a mountain of available food interferes with the "free market"). Thus an important cushion against hunger has been eliminated. A classic case is Haiti, which used to be self-sufficient for its main staple crop -- rice -- but now is a rice
importer, increasingly subject to the whims of commodity speculators and agribusiness corporations.

** Commodity speculators. Food has become "the new gold." "Investors fleeing Wall Street's mortgage-related strife plowed hundreds of
millions of dollars into grain futures, driving prices up even more," the Washington Post reported April 27. Rising food prices have
attracted hedge fund speculators, who have helped create a "bubble" in food prices. "As financial markets have tumbled, food prices have
soared," acknowledges Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank.

** The U.S. Department of Agriculture's land conservation program pays farmers to not grow crops on some of their land. About 8% of U.S.
cropland -- some 37 million acres, larger than the state of New York -- lies fallow as a result of this program. This is good for ducks and
pheasant and it reduces soil srosion, but it also reduces available crops, holding crop prices higher than they might otherwise be (which is one purpose of the program).

** And lastly, in the U.S. at least, we spend huge amounts of money feeding our pets. I know I am touching the third rail here, but someone has got to mention this 900-pound gorilla in the room.

The American Pet Products Manufacturers Association expects Americans to spend about $43.4 billion on their pets in 2008, up from $41.2 billion in 2007. About $16.9 billion of that will be spent on pet food.

Meanwhile President Bush has proposed that Congress should dedicate $770 million for food aid to a hungry world. "The American people are generous people, and they're compassionate people," Mr. Bush said, announcing his new food aid plan. "We believe in a timeless truth: to
whom much is given, much is expected."

The President's gift of $770 million to the world's 100 million hungriest people represents 4.6% of what we spend each year feeding Fido and Kitty. (And, by the way, we are spending $770 million every 42 hours in Iraq.)

But maybe our pet food priorities are not as skewed as they may first appear. Take a look at this ad, which I noticed recently in a local
Supermarket.


(Ad for Beneful Dog Food)


If it weren't for the little dog in the picture, and if it weren't a Purina ad, you might think this was an ad for human food. Just look at
that lucious heaping plate -- a white dinner plate -- of red meat and vegetables. Who would turn that down?

Personally, I feel certain that this Purina ad is aiming to sell dog food not only to Fido's master, but also to those impoverished U.S.
citizens who must seek food aid each year to alleviate their hunger -- 25 million people in 2006 and rising. So maybe we're not spending
$16.9 billion merely to feed our pets. Maybe we're actually spending part of $16.9 billion providing dog food to some of the tens of
millions of U.S. citizens who otherwise could not afford a meal. Perhaps this is a thinly-veiled free-market answer to hunger in America.

==============

[1] The U.S. is currently putting 20 to 25% of its corn acreage into ethanol production, producing roughly 8 billion gallons of ethanol
in 2007, but the entire U.S. ethanol industry is still small, valued at only $40 billion total -- equivalent to one years's net profits of a large oil company like Exxon, which reported netting $40.6 billion in 2007. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that ethanol from corn (in the U.S. and Europe) is
responsible for 10 to 15% of the rise in global commodity prices. The International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, D.C. says 25% to 33% of the rise in global food prices can be explained by ethanol production from corn."


Love,
starduster
http://totherow.tripod.com/

Posted by star on May 16, 2008 at 08:41 PM EDT #

People with beliefs other than your own are idiots? Now now, are you a Christian or what?

What happened to "thou shalt not judge?"

star

Posted by star on May 17, 2008 at 07:41 AM EDT #

New "cause" of climate change:

http://tinyurl.com/4xtn2e

Posted by Gene Prescott on May 17, 2008 at 12:50 PM EDT #

Norman wrote:

((The cause? What difference does it make?))

There have been climate changes in both directions over time, though the data for early periods is scant compared to recent periods. Some of the changes have occurred when there were fewer humans consuming less per capita resources. The cause matters as it relates to remedy.

While most scientists believe the earth is warming, Lawrence Solomon's recently published book, "The Deniers" include names and credentials of some that challenge any consensus as to cause or remedy.

I've only read about the The Institute on Religion and Democracy campaign, but I've read "The Deniers" and found it interesting and pertinent to this discussion.

Posted by Gene Prescott on May 17, 2008 at 11:09 PM EDT #

star,

You don't even understand the implications of your own questions. You are the one who is confused.

Not being an evolutionist, and being a Bible believer, I understand that people are going to be on the earth until time ends. There is no possiblity that "global warming" or anything else, is going to eliminate human life on the earth, and anyone who thinks otherwise is an idiot.

Yes, I am a Christian.

It is clear that you are accusing me of judging others while you are doing the exact same thing to me. It is your hypocrisy that I object to.

Posted by Gary Bryson on May 19, 2008 at 07:09 AM EDT #

More evidence to support your position, Gary:

Over 31,000 scientists (over 9,000 with PhDs) reject global warming theory.

http://www.petitionproject.org/

As of 9:25 AM Saturday, Global Warming was still AWOL - Where's Al Gore!

In my lifetime, and in the position of a working academic scientist, on two occasions I've signed open letters or petitions on major scientific controversies. Firstly, I signed the Scientists Declaration on Nuclear Power, which was circulated even before Chernobyl or Three Mile Island, but which basically predicted such disasters, as well as the continuing problem of what to do with accumulated atomic waste materials. Secondly, the Open Letter of the Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV Hypothesis of AIDS, which basically called for critical reviews of how AIDS develops or is transmitted, outside of the predominant HIV hypothesis -- yes, it is only an hypothesis, never proven. Well, here we are today, more than 30 or 20 years later, and virtually every prediction made by those groups of dissenting scientists have been proven correct. Now comes the theory about global warming -- is the warming real? If real, is it long-term? If real and long-term, is it being driven by CO2, and is that CO2 being increased by human industrial output alone, or by any human activity? Four or five important questions in those sentences, but the fact is that not one of them has been definitively answered with certainty by modern science.

The reader will know about the 2000 or 3000 "scientists" who have lent their names to the IPCC (Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change) Report on global climate change, because this has been repeatedly blared out in media reports, as if "voting" on scientific issues had some merit. It does not. But only a few will know the details of the fraudulent IPCC petition signatures. Such as, that most of those signators are not scientists at all, but rather political hacks or environmental activists appointed to governmental panels by the various UN member-states. Only a much smaller number are authentic natural scientists with PhDs, and even fewer with expertise in the earth, atmospheric or environmental sciences. A few had their names included on the IPCC without permissions, to jack up the numbers, having been a part of the IPCC evaluation team, but who dissented from its unscientific and politically motivated positions and conclusions -- but their names were included anyway, over their loudly voiced objections.

Here's a new one, which seems more authentic:

Global Warming Petition Project

31,072 American scientists have signed this petition, including 9,021 with PhDs

http://www.petitionproject.org/

In any case, even global warming advocates will have to admit, that 31,000 and 9,000 are larger numbers than 3000, even if their arithmetic is stunningly inaccurate on everything else. Yes, when global CO2 levels in the glacial ice-core records routinely rise and fall some 500 years after temperature rises and falls, this does indicate that if a direct causality exists, that it must be temperature driving CO2 levels, and not the other way around. As when the ocean warms a little bit, it tends to release gigantic amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. This is fact, even if the Pied Piper .... oops, I mean, Al Gore, says just the opposite with a nice smile on his face, speaking in metered tones like he is speaking to children.

J.D.


Love,
starduster
http://totherow.tripod.com/

Posted by star on May 25, 2008 at 08:44 PM EDT #